News

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY: A YEAR IN REVIEW

May 20, 2013

Summer is just ahead and we look back over our first year at Perry Rubenstein Gallery in Los Angeles with a sense of awe and excitement. Awe at how fast the time has passed and how much fun we’ve had in the process of finding our way in the city of angels. And excitement at our continuing and evolving program and it’s brilliant future, with many great things to come.

Columbia Pictures “From Here to Eternity” (1953)

From our 2012 summer opening features, showing the late Helmut Newton’s work Sex and Landscapes, and the special event barbecue party with collaborators Neil Young and Shepard Fairey for Americana, we just whetted our appetite for this vibrant and multi-faceted city and the year that lay ahead.

Dinner in honor of Helmut Newton’s Sex and Landscapes at Perry Rubenstein Gallery.

From Helmut Newton’s Sex And Landscapes.

Jim Carrey and Albert Brooks at Perry Rubenstein Gallery for Americana.

A “blindfolded” trio performing for Helmut Newton’s Sex and Landscapes opening reception.

We kicked off the fall programming with our inaugural exhibition of Zoe Crosher: The Disappearing of Michelle duBois in our newly opened Los Angeles gallery.

From Zoe Crosher’s The Disappearing of Michelle duBois.

In this landmark exhibit, Zoe Crosher presented the final works from the Michelle duBois project, her photographic investigations, and re-imaginings of the extensive amateur archive of avid traveler and self-documentarian, Michelle duBois, culminating the multi-year Michelle duBois project and marking the effective dissolution of the archive.

From Zoe Crosher’s The Disappearing of Michelle duBois.

Zoe Crosher’s show was a tremendous exhibition, deeply intelligent and rigorously executed, taking its place in the company of some of the most important and relevant photographers and their practice today.

We then completed the fall programming with the historic exhibition of Mike Kelley’s brilliant work Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites.

Installation view of Mike Kelley’s Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites at Perry Rubenstein Galery.

It was an honor to show the masterpiece by the late Mike Kelley here in Los Angeles, the spiritual and artistic hometown of this brilliant artist. The work looked tremendous in the space, as though made for it, and the exhibit marked the first time that Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites was shown in America in its entirety.

Installation view of Mike Kelley’s Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites at Perry Rubenstein Gallery.

As a result of the exhibition of Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites Perry Rubenstein, with collector Peter Brant also making a significant charitable donation to the museum, sold the work to MOMA for a record breaking price, forever establishing Mike Kelley as one of the greatest artist of our times.

Our spring program at Perry Rubenstein Gallery opened with Iwan Baan and his iconic work on the “Torre David”, a photographic journey through the abandoned famed skyscraper of Caracas that has become a micro city of squatters.

Iwan Baan’s Torre David #1, 2011.

This marked Iwan Baan’s first gallery exhibition at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery and first solo show in Los Angeles, with which he took his rightful place amongst the pantheon of artistic architectural photography, and such names as Catherine Opie, Struth, Stoller and Andreas Gursky, demonstrating his unique contribution to the entire field of photography, in his intervention and investigation of architecture as an exploration of humanity.

Iwan Baan’s Torre David #2, 2011.

In the works of the “Torre David” project, as well as numerous other works on display, Iwan Baan humanized and transformed architecture with his unique vision and practice, and we at Perry Rubenstein Gallery were excited to feature this groundbreaking exhibition and artist.

Iwan Baan’s The City and the Storm, 2012.

Our subsequent and current exhibition of the spring features the conceptual artist, Georg Herold, showing recent and new sculptural works and paintings. Herold’s amazing figures fill the gallery with their dynamic presence and powerful scale, and give the sense of living beings among us, beings created by Herold’s dynamic and rigorous artistic practice.

Installation of Georg Herold’s Dear Hunter at Perry Rubenstein Gallery.

In Georg Herold the tension between the living representation and the conceptual practice materialize effortlessly and powerfully, and the anthropomorphic works inhabit the space as though they have taken possession of it as their own.

Installation view of Georg Herold’s Dear Hunter at Perry Rubenstein Gallery.

We at Perry Rubenstein Gallery are very proud of this exhibition and have been thrilled to work with the brilliant Georg Herold every step of the way, and to have his magnificent works of sculpture present in our Los Angeles gallery, a space, and a city, in which they simply seem to belong.

In all it has been an amazing year and Los Angeles couldn’t have been more gracious and welcoming and an inspiring place to be. We’ve made many new friends and were visited by old ones that have come to see the new space.

Los Angeles is a unique place, and different in so many ways from New York. In LA our visitors don’t drop in nearly as often as they might have in New York. When the weather is beautiful and the traffic plentiful, the drive to get into the car often succumbs to the desire to stay right where you are. But those—and they have been plentiful, welcome and engaging—that make the trip to Hollywood and come and visit in the gallery, come to stay for a while, and we enjoy long and comfortable visits in which we really have a chance to talk, about art and life and all the quirks and perks of living in LA.

From here to eternity, we are gratified for all the support and all the welcome we’ve received, inspired by all the visits and interest of the many thoughtful and knowledgeable collectors, art lovers, colleagues and fellow Los Angelenos. We are right where we want to be, and look forward to a tremendous season coming up with many announcements soon to be made.

Columbia Pictures “From Here to Eternity” (1953)

In the meantime, as the summer season approaches, we prepare for our summer exhibition of conceptual sculpture The Humors, and we look forward to seeing you all here at the gallery, in flip flops or heels, in shorts or suits, in a sunny summer in LA.

GEORG HEROLD: FIRST SOLO MUSEUM EXHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES

April 25, 2013

We are delighted to announce that one week after opening his exhibition here in Los Angeles, Georg Herold has been invited to have his first solo museum exhibition in the United States this September at the Dallas Contemporary.

The exhibition will be an expanded version of the exhibition of new sculpture and painting at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery. Curated by the Dallas Contemporary’s Director Peter Doroschenko, it will include many if not most of the sculptures exhibited.

Internationally, Georg Herold has been exhibited and celebrated extensively. Recent solo exhibitions include “Urs Fischer & Georg Herold”, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, and major exhibitions at Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2012), Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2007), the South London Gallery (2007), S.M.A.K, Ghent (2007), and Tate Liverpool (2004).

Georg Herold lives and works in Cologne. With this much deserved exhbition in September, we are assured and can expect to see a lot more of both Georg and his work here in Los Angeles and on this side of the pond.

Our heartiest Congratulations, Georg. Well deserved.

FAST TIMES IN LA: SPEEDING THROUGH APRIL

April 21, 2013

With Takashi Murakami’s opening at LACMA, Urs Fischer’s at MOCA, and it’s Gala behind us, and our own Georg Herold finally installed and opened among a community of artists with whom he has immeasurable relations, the month comes hurtling toward another marker of Los Angeles’ place at the table, the inaugural Paris Photo LA.

Opening at and on the lots of the Paramount Studios, the venerable photography fair has staked a claim here in our city, determined as are are to make what is already a burgeoning scene all the more compulsory.

Blonde and TV, Hotel Gallia, Milan, 2002

No sooner did will cut the metaphoric ribbon on our new spaces here last September, we were greeted and treated with an invitation to participate in not a fair for Photography, but the Fair. In less than two decades, Paris Photohas become the most prestigious art international fair focusing on and specializing in historical and contemporary photography. It is on the cusp of expanding those boundaries. And we here to push them in the direction they have already ventured upon.

Paris Photo, which takes place annually at the Grand Palais in Paris mid-November, will open at the Paramount Pictures Studios in Los Angeles on April 25th. Enriched by the unique cultural environment of these two cities, Paris Photo LA will offer its visitors an unsurpassed experience in two historic locations which bring together all the different trends in photography.

Zoe Crosher, Mae-Wested, 2012

We are bringing the work of three of our artists; each vastly different, all three superb. The gallery will be repesented by Helmut Newton, Iwan Baan, and Los Angeles’ Zoe Crosher. In this past year, Helmut Newton was celebrated and enjoyed by literally millions in Paris’ Grand Palais, Baan emerged from behind his camera for an inaugural exhibition here in Los Angeles, and Crosher, well, Zoe has one hell of a year. With solo exhibitions at the Dallas Contemporary in the spring and at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in the fall, Zoe’s season was crowned with he inclusion at MoMA in this year’s exhibition of New Photography.

Confinanzas 1964, Caracas

To say we are looking forward to seeing you at Paris Photo LA is an understatement. We do so with the same enormous anticipation and excitement as we have has since Paris Photo first announced it’s plans for Los Angeles. See you at the Paramount.

GEORG HEROLD: UNVEILING THE VISION

April 17, 2013

As we prepare the gallery for our exhibition of the Georg Herold’s show of recent and new sculptural works and paintings, we can’t help but feel there’s something magical about the setting up of this particular show. As the crates arrived at the gallery, and we began to unpack, uncrate, and reveal Herold’s amazing figures, we felt like we were in the presence of living beings, beings created by Herold’s dynamic artistic practice, that have come to life in our presence.

Setting up for tomorrow’s opening, we find ourselves erecting Herold’s vision in the gallery, placing the sculptural pieces in relationship to the space itself, to the light within the space, and in relationship to each other, and reflecting on Georg Herold’s intention in the creation of these conceptual sculptures that embody not only a culmination and progression of a long and strong artistic practice, but also comprise a set of figures that encompass a distinct visceral beauty within their conceptual naissance and tradition.

IMG_6670 copy

Seeing the tension between the living representation and the conceptual practice emerge and materialize before us has been fascinating and powerful to experience. We at Perry Rubenstein Gallery couldn’t be more excited about Georg Herold’s upcoming exhibition at the gallery, and we are thrilled to welcome Georg Herold, and his brilliant works of sculpture, to our new home in Los Angeles. And we welcome all to come and visit, and experience this amazing exhibition up close and in the space in which it was meant to be shown.

photo (4)

DETOURS AND DIRECTION: THE ROAD AHEAD

April 4, 2013

Hard as it may be for a neophyte to the Southland to notice the change of seasons in LA– and believe me it’s not easy– there are certain unalienable markers that always let you know you where you are, and what time of year you reside in:

Bud, leaves, desert flowers.

Driving is imagining. Stopping is dreaming. Walking is thinking. Stalk through the rabbit sage and the cactus flowers and look up at the towering Sierras. Drive for sixty miles straight through the Mojave Desert. Stop and listen to the wind. And breathe.

You simply cannot see the world the same.

There is a big season ahead. Our first spring here in Los Angeles; in the West. The sky is big, and the road appears endless ahead, but the seeds of our labors are budding with life.

Our Georg Herold exhibition is coming soon. Georg Herold will also be showing at the Dallas Contemporary through our diligent persistence and belief in this extraordinary artist. Herold’s work, which is already so well known and regarded in New York City, London and Berlin, is about to be seen in a different light; and in a new and more open space. To be given a fresh look here is LA.

Whether it be the crossing of the Mississippi, or the passage of time, the trail West has become inevitable; a road that must be taken.

Not having been in LA since 1989, it is not a coincidence that Georg Herold will arrive at the same time as Urs Fischer coming to MOCA, and at the same time as the Paris Photo Fair, as well as Takashi Murakami at LACMA. There is spring in the air. April in LA.

Buds are budding. And art is happening…

HERALDING GEORG HEROLD

March 22, 2013

There are many reasons that we at Perry Rubenstein Gallery consider Georg Herold an extraordinary artist in the truest sense of the word.

Georg Herold’s visionary work has spanned an impressive four decades. He has influenced generations of artists from Europe to America. A student of Sigmar Polke, working contemporaneously with such fellow artists as Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger, Georg Herold is firmly rooted in German sensibility and tradition, yet the body of his work has traversed all boundaries of geography, culture, trend and time, and made him one of the key conceptual artists of our time. He has worked in an impressively wide range of media from sculpture, installation, photography, painting and video, and done so with a singular vision and voice. But most of all Georg Herold, after over forty years of creating an impressive and indelible body of work, is arguably now creating some of the best work of his life.

Georg Herold – Blühendes Leben

Most artists, as they mature and grow, show a change in their later work, as lines often become bigger, bolder, simpler, darker. It is as if one can witness the slowing down,the wearying of the artist from the sheer wages of time, and the energy spent on a full career of exploration and invention. Georg Herold’s work shows nothing of this trend, perhaps only the opposite.

Georg Herold’s current work is younger, more energetic and more dynamic than ever. Though he works within his consistent and unique vision, exploring the meaning of the transformation of the “neutral” material, exploring the awakening of rough and crude objects of ordinary and modest value, through the artist’s transformation, into living, dynamic sculptures, dynamic, living beings, his work has also evolved and grown brilliantly.

Georg Herold – Mount Parnass

His latest figures still utilize his traditional underpinnings of the use of building materials and rough unfinished objects that live primarily not for their own existence, but to become another object, and to be consumed and subsumed in the process. However, Georg Herold now transforms these bones into living bodies, raw materials literally becoming harbingers of an explosive life in his figurative sculptures.

Neutral materials are nothing until they are transformed. They, by definition, inhabit transition. But Herold’s neutral materials are bound and tried and wrapped and shellacked and painted to create some of the most dynamic and vibrant figures in contemporary sculpture. Herold’s figures exist in the tension between the formed and unformed, the uncertainty between beauty and beast, and the mystery state of flux, which is that anything in flux is either in a state of decay or emergence. And Herold’s figures unambiguously seem to come alive under his forming and transforming,

Georg Herold – Looking at and through

Georg Herold’s figures embody not only life, but character, yearning and aspiration. They symbolize the ambition of wood to return to its living state, and simultaneously moving out of its original rootedness into a state of motion and buoyancy. Georg Herold’s figures push out of themselves like double-jointed acrobats celebrating their newfound freedom. They seem to delight in their own bodies and limbs, unaware of their rough and humble pedigrees.

Herold’s sculptures stretch with languor and flaunting, reaching, pushing their poses with absurd flexibility, convinced of their own desirability, while seemingly unaware of their grotesque size and structure. Herold’s figures perform vigorously for an unseen audience, while trapped in a stasis of an impossible fulfillment of desire. Herold’sfigures will never be able to move in the way they themselves seem convinced that they can. This tension enlivens them all the more, into the dynamic sculptural figures that seem to embody the impossibility our very own desires and physical limitations.

MOMA ACQUIRES MIKE KELLEYS DEODORIZED CENTRAL MASS WITH SATELITES

March 18, 2013

In 1962, Andy Warhol made what most consider, if not his most important work, at minimum the work that broke ground for him and generations to follow. Andy painted soups cans in a direct and in your face manner that was revolutionary. Then Andy stacked the paintings on a shelf in Los Angeles, outside of view from the city in which he lived and worked, and which he loved, and left them there.

Finally thirty-six Soup Can paintings were offered for sale. Two collectors each bought one. Fortunately for Andy and for art history, the two collectors were friends of the man who had sold them: the legendary Irving Blum of the Ferus Gallery. Irving Blum had the prescience to think about the future. He reacquired the two paintings from the collectors and kept the 36 Soup Can paintings together for decades. Andy in the meantime found his audience and his market. Collectors bought his work, sold it, and in some cases, donated it to museums. Had they not done that, Andy’s wait for curatorial affirmation may have taken even longer.

Almost thirty-four years later, and almost a decade after his tragic death, Andy’s thirty-six Soup Cans were acquired by MOMA, again due to the hard work and brilliance of the sage Irving Blum.

In buying the work, MOMA forever changed the market for Warhol, and set a path that is still continuing to be drawn. Museums have that power. They validate and institutionalize what we think and see, and at times, what we already know. They are not always the first. They couldn’t possibly be. The reasons for that are too many too list, but easily as long as the list of working artists at any given time. They must by definition make decisions at a different pace. Tell stories that make sense. Anoint and choose…. not just champion important voices, but the right work.

This is what has just happened again… MOMA has anointed Mike Kelley. They have forever spoken as his champion. It’s a big commitment on their part. Invested in. Believed. Revered.

Mike Kelley’s path from CalArts to the permanent collection at MOMA, also took over long thirty years. But the acquisition of Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites marks the final missing validation for a brilliant artist and his brilliant work. Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites is incisive, self-reflective, ironic, sentimental and deep.

With “Deodorized Central Mass With Satellites” Mike Kelley explores the American dream and its excess of consumption; a society obsessed with luxury and its most fleeting objects of low quality, which ironically represent quality of life.

We at Perry Rubenstein are proud to have been able to bring the exhibition of this masterful work to its home in Los Angeles, and to have facilitated the final sale to MOMA for collector Peter Brant. And MOMA will now bring Mike Kelley and Deodorized Central Mass With Satellites out of its shipping crate and into the museum where a day’s public of 5000 visitors will be able to view and appreciate the long path of this long hidden, superb work of art.

IWAN BAAN

February 20, 2013

PERRY RUBENSTEIN GALLERY

1215 N. HIGHLAND AVENUE, LOS ANGELES

ANNOUNCES

IWAN BAAN’S FIRST EXHIBITION AT THE GALLERY

THE WAY WE LIVE

February 20 – April 13, 2013

OPENING RECEPTION, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2013, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Los Angeles, February 20, 2013 –
Perry Rubenstein Gallery announces The Way We Live, Iwan Baan’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. Baan’s work exists at a critical juncture between architectural photography and sociocultural inquiry at a time when urbanization is a driving force behind human evolution.

The Way We Live features captivating large-scale images of urban, architectural, and home environments that capture Baan’s singular vision. Baan’s artistic practice examines how we live and interact with architecture, focusing on the human element, which brings buildings, intersections, and public gathering places to life. Baan’s images examine the choices we make through construction and building, whether it be sectioning off tracts of impoverished urban sprawl with massive traffic interchanges, reintegrating purposeful gathering areas into large-scale public buildings, or living in housing that stretches the boundaries of how a community functions. Taken as a whole, his artwork examines each subject in depth, capturing a site’s essence through a spectrum of images ranging from sweeping aerial overviews to intimate one-on-one moments.

For The Way We Live, Perry Rubenstein’s East Gallery will feature a selection of large-scale images spanning the last eight years. The exhibition will offer a balanced overview of Baan’s work, represented by images from more than a dozen of his most dynamic projects. Among the artist’s earliest projects, Tokyo #1 (2006) was created to celebrate the opening of Toyo Ito’s groundbreaking Mikimoto Ginza 2 building in Tokyo, Japan. A contemplative figure in traditional dress peers out from one of the slick building’s boulder-shaped corner windows, perfectly capturing the city’s complex interplay of high-technology and ancient tradition. Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House exists at the intersection of old and new China, where massive futuristic buildings are still built largely by hand. Baan’s image of opera patrons on the inaugural evening, gazing out from seats hovering against a luminous gold interior, calls into question how these ambitious expressions of China’s growth link back to the world outside.

The West Gallery will feature an in-depth presentation centered around Baan’s Golden Lion Award-winning project on the Torre David in Caracas, Venezuela. When a forty-five-story office skyscraper project stalled in 1993 due to lack of funds, locals began moving into the building. Through its slow conversion into a highly organized and successfully self-governed communal living space, the Torre David became a testament to the ingenuity of the neighborhood’s residents. Images such as Torre David #2 (2011), an upward-looking shot of the building’s oculus with homemade window coverings marking different tenants’ living quarters, depict how residents crafted unique personal living spaces out of a partially constructed concrete shell.

Perry Rubenstein comments, “Iwan Baan’s practice effortlessly conjoins photography and architecture, simultaneously exploring the iconic power of structures and habitats and the humanity and fragility of life within them. His voice is singular and undeniable.”

Until recently, Baan was best known for his images of major building projects by such renowned architecture firms as OMA / Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA, Steven Holl, Morphosis, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, among others. More recently, he has gained prominence through his award-winning photographs of the Torre David and an iconic aerial image he took of lower Manhattan without electricity after Hurricane Sandy devastated the city. The image became widely known following its publication on the cover of New York Magazine’s November 12 issue titled, The City and the Storm, which is also the title of the photograph. Baan has created an artwork based on this powerful image, which will be on view during The Way We Live.

Iwan Baan’s work was recently included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, and in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s, White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes. The artist’s work has regularly appeared in major publications such as the New York Times, New York Magazine, Domus, Abitare, Architectural Record, and the New Yorker, among others. In 2011, he was named one of the most influential people in the contemporary architecture world by Il Magazin dell’Architettura. On the occasion of Julius Shulman’s 100th Birthday, Baan was honored as the inaugural recipient of the prestigious Julius Shulman Institute Photography Award. In 2012, Baan, along with Urban-Think Tank (Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner) and Justin McGuirk, won the Golden Lion for the Best Project at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice for the project Torre David, that was exhibited at Corderie, Arsenale.

Iwan Baan, Bird’s Nest #2, 2007, Digital C-Print, 48 x 72 inches (121.9 x 182.9 cm)

Perry Rubenstein Gallery

1215 N. Highland Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90038

T: (323) 464-1097

W: www.perryrubenstein.com/artist/iwan-baan

Gallery Hours: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Tuesday-Saturday

Facebook: facebook.com/perryrubenstein

Twitter: @PerryRubenstein, #PRGIwanBaan

Media Contact

FITZ & CO

Justin Conner

E: (212) 627-1455 ext. 233

E: Justin@fitzandco.com

IWAN BAAN AND THE TORRE DAVID

February 15, 2013

Who would have thought, that when Iwan Baan came into the Perry Rubenstein Gallery to give a presentation of his iconic work on the “Torre David”, a photographic journey through the abandoned famed skyscraper of Caracas that has become a micro city of squatters, that we would discover a great artist?

We might have had an inkling.

Iwan Baan did win the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale last year for his “Torre David” project, part of the Common Ground exhibition curated by David Chipperfield. Iwan Baan also won the inaugural Julius Schulman Photography Award in October of 2012, here in Los Angeles. But it was the artist beyond the photographic practice, the artist beyond the architectural representation, the artist Iwan Baan who so clearly stood before us that day. Art takes reality by surprise. But the reality of Iwan Baan’s distinctive artistic voice, and the magnitude of his artistic practice, took us by surprise that day, and we’ve never looked back.

Iwan Baan’s vision is truly unique. His art not only transcends, but transforms, our understanding of dwelling and human life. In every one of his images, there is a deeper exploration of what it means to be engaged in the practice of occupying space. In his artistic eye, dwelling is more than seeking shelter; it is a story unfolding, a story of human beings in interaction with one another, in opposition and union, and in mutual striving; the dance of creation and survival. And it is this very striving that becomes so moving in Baan’s images.

No matter how humble, Baan’s images capture the human reach for beauty and perfection. When shooting upward through a monumental cylindrical shaft of the Torre David, into the open night sky at dizzying heights, Baan still captures a single flowerpot sprouting its reaching leaves, reaching for the light, and two small figures visible far above, like the casual witnesses to a miracle. When shooting his iconic aerial images, such as that of the vast sprawl of Caracas, he still portrays the creeping expanse of the impoverished favelas, climbing the foothills the like creeping beggars reaching to touch the hems of the royal robes. A perfect, rigid grid of symmetrical balconies reverberates with tension from the imperfection of hanging laundry, cardboard partitions, and sheets for makeshift window coverings; order stained by the flawed human striving for its own kind of perfection. Even in Baan’s colorful night vision of Caracas, the obverse favelas sit like sentries before the fortress of the glowing thriving city beyond, like guardians of an abandoned conscience.

Rooted in the traditions of the architectural photography of Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Thomas Ruff, Iwan Baan nonetheless stands on his own. It is Iwan Baan’s humanity that can be seen in every one of his images and that sets him apart. In the very definition of art, Baan has a perception of humanity, as humanity itself hardly understands. His visions are organic in their naturalness. They are true to life. Unstaged. Messy. Human. Simply allowed to happen. As life sprouts and buds and replicates and perpetuates itself, Baan captures it in its transitional moments, and in its never-ending metamorphosis. Everywhere that humans congregate, life is untamed and unruly. Iwan Baan’s images capture this imperfect perfection, and the human binding need for survival; the innate desire for community in humanity’s battle against the essential and inexorable solitude that is the ultimate reality of existence.

Iwan Baan’s artistic practice is about to be introduced in his first gallery exhibition at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery. With this exhibition he will take his rightful place amongst the pantheon of artistic architectural photography, and such names as Catherine Opie, Struth, Stoller and Andreas Gursky. Museums, editors and curators have, already recognized his award winning work of the “Torre David” project. His emergence will now further demonstrate his unique contribution to the entire field of photography, in which he moves past representation to subject matter, in which his intervention and investigation leads to his own sense of humanity and all of ours. In the “Torre David”, as well as other works, Iwan Baan brings architecture to life. He humanizes and transforms it and we at Perry Rubenstein are excited to feature this groundbreaking exhibition.

Iwan Baan

December 18, 2012

Perry Rubenstein GALLERY

Announces

REPRESENTATION OF Iwan Baan

BAAN CREATES MONUMENTAL, LIMITED EDITION ARTWORK OF ICONIC IMAGE

THE CITY AND THE STORM TO BENEFIT The Mayor’s Fund To Advance

New York City in support of Hurricane Sandy relief efforts

PERRY RUBENSTEIN GALLERY TO PRESENT

BAAN’S FIRST EXHIBITION, THE WAY WE LIVE, AT THE GALLERY

February 20 – April 13, 2013

OPENING RECEPTION, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2013, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Iwan Baan, The City and the Storm, 2012,
Digital C-Print, 70 3/4 x 47 1/4 inches (179.7 x 120 cm)

Los Angeles, December 17, 2012 — Perry Rubenstein Gallery announces representation of Iwan Baan in his artistic practice. Baan’s work exists at a critical juncture between architectural photography and sociocultural inquiry at a time when urbanization is a driving force behind human evolution.

Baan’s aerial image of a post-hurricane Manhattan became a viral sensation following its publication on the cover of New York Magazine’s November 12 issue titled The City and the Storm, and from which the photograph also takes its name. The magazine had commissioned the image in the storm’s aftermath, and upon seeing it for the first time editors quickly recognized the image as an iconic visual for its issue on Hurricane Sandy. By so eloquently encapsulating Sandy’s tremendous impact on the city, Baan gave viewers around the world an instantaneous, visceral understanding of the situation’s gravity. Baan has created an artwork based on this powerful image in the form of a large format artwork (70-3/4 x 47-1/4 inches) in an edition of 10, which will be exhibited as part of Perry Rubenstein Gallery’s upcoming exhibition titled The Way We Live. The edition will be sold for $100,000 each to benefit the Mayor’s Fund To Advance New York City in support of Hurricane Sandy relief efforts (nyc.gov/fund). The Museum of Modern Art, in cooperation with Iwan Baan and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, has issued a poster of The City and the Storm that will also support relief efforts. More information at MoMAstore.org.

“Iwan Baan’s powerful and now iconic image brought to life one of the many devastating effects our City experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Baan’s first exhibition at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery will not only share his images but help support our City’s efforts to recover from this devastating storm through their generous contribution to the Mayor’s Fund.”

Iwan Baan comments, “Although I’ve never been an actual resident of New York, in my almost sixteen years of frequent visits and stays, I’ve always considered the city to be home. I had arrived the day before Sandy hit New York and felt I needed to document this extraordinary event. In my practice, I have flown by helicopter many times over New York City, but what I saw that night after Sandy hit was something I could never have imagined. A town divided in two; at once the vibrant city that never sleeps and a New York awake but without power. One light. One dark. Response to the picture was immediate. As more and more people saw the image virally, people everywhere identified with it. With the damage so severe, the harm so great, and the cost so significant, I thought it was time to do something for the city hence this project. Still thousands of people live with the aftermath of the storm and need urgent help. I’m thrilled we could team up with MoMA, the premier cultural institution of New York, to launch this poster campaign and with Perry Rubenstein Gallery to sell a limited edition of artworks from which all proceeds will go back to the Mayor’s Fund and to the people in the city who need it most.”

The City and the Storm will be a centerpiece in Perry Rubenstein Gallery’s exhibition The Way We Live that will feature captivating large-scale images of Baan’s singular vision encompassing urban, architectural and home environments. Baan’s artistic practice examines how we live and interact with architecture, focusing on the human element, which brings buildings, intersections, and public gathering places to life. Baan’s images examine the choices we make through construction and building, whether it be to section off tracts of impoverished urban sprawl with massive traffic interchanges, reintegrate purposeful gathering areas into large-scale public buildings, or live in housing that stretches the boundaries of how a community functions. In his work, Baan’s startling images conjure the artistic realm of artists like Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Struth.

Until recently, Baan was best known for his unique images of major building projects by such renowned architecture firms as OMA / Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA, Steven Holl, Morphosis, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, among others. More recently, he came to prominence through his award-winning photographs of the Torre David, an abandoned skyscraper project in Caracas, Venezuela that has been adaptively colonized by local residents in an accidental study of urban utopic living.

Iwan Baan’s work was recently included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, and in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s, White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes. The artist’s work has regularly appeared in major publications such as the New York Times, New York magazine, Domus, Abitare, and the New Yorker, among others. In 2011, he was named one of the most influential people in the contemporary architecture world by Il Magazin dell’Architettura. On the occasion of Julius Shulman’s 100th Birthday, Baan was honored as the inaugural recipient of the prestigious Julius Shulman Institute Photography Award. In 2012, Baan, along with Urban-Think Tank (Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner), and Justin McGuirk, won the Golden Lion at the International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia for the project Torre David, that was exhibited at Corderie, Arsenale.

For inquiries regarding the purchase of The City and the Storm limited edition artwork to benefit the Mayor’s Fund To Advance New York City in support of Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, visit perryrubenstein.com or nyc.gov/fund. To purchase the Museum of Modern Art’s poster “The City and the Storm” visit MoMAstore.org.

Iwan Baan, The City and the Storm, 2012, Digital C-Print, 70 3/4 x 47 1/4 inches (179.7 x 120 cm)

Perry Rubenstein Gallery

1215 N. Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038

T: (323) 464-1097

W: http://www.perryrubenstein.com/artist/iwan-baan

Gallery Hours: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Tuesday-Saturday.

We will be closed for the holidays from December 22, 2012 through January 1, 2013.